It was a big night when our 20 year old brought her first official boyfriend around for dinner. He was rather tasty, apart from the chewy bits. No, just joking.

He seemed a very nice young man. If he has any tattoos, drug addictions or psychotic tendencies he kept them well under wraps. The only complication was his vegetarianism.

People who won't eat meat are always nerve wracking to cook for. An evening meal doesn't seem properly filling and flavoursome without meat of some sort. It's just an old fashioned, immoral, possibly health threatening hang up on my part.

Nearly all our daughter's university friends are vegetarian, vegan or in the throes of some kind of eating disorder. While I genuinely respect their idealism, it's good for young people to be jolted out of their comfort zone now and then.

Because the poor things were exposed to dysfunctional families and X-rated videos since birth practically, it's impossible to startle them with stories of sex, drugs and rock n roll.

If I really want to shock these admirable young greenies all I have to do is fondly recall the days when people thought they were hard done by if they didn't devour meat three times a day.

I decided to experiment with chicken risotto, using pumpkin and sweet potato instead of chicken. To keep things cheerful, I added rather a lot of white wine (not forgetting to swill a glass or two to test for traces of meat or any other poisons).

The wine had the added bonus or loosening my nerves, enabling me to crack some hilarious jokes at which he dutifully laughed. In fact, my stories were so witty and entertaining I inadvertently added a cup of chicken stock to the risotto. Fortunately, he didn't seem to notice. He even took a second helping.

After dinner he asked to see our daughter's baby photos, proving his devotion beyond doubt. We couldn't seem to find them, but she managed to dredge up an album of photos from her teenage years.

He'd also made a point of reading my recent books, which was embarrassing because nobody in the family reads them, mainly because they present a warped unreliable perspective of our lives. Nevertheless, he seemed to have devoured every word.

Part of the purpose of the evening was for him to show us sl

ide photos he took when he and our daughter travelled Asia together last year before they started "going out” (another fascinating facet of today's youth is they can trudge through the world's most foreign and dangerous places together without technically "going out”).

When I asked if anyone had seen my spectacles, the young man wanted to know why I favoured such an archaic word. He'd noticed I also used it in my books. Almost speechless for once, I said wasn't it because glasses are supposed to be filled with wine?

We didn't have a screen, so my husband removed a picture from the living room wall. Sprawled over the sofas we were transported to the temples and markets of Laos with a picture hook in the top right hand corner.

The nice young man said his sister was about to get married. It would be the first wedding he'd been to. Our daughter replied she hadn't been to many weddings either, apart from her mother and father's second weddings - which didn't qualify as proper weddings, not the sort of wedding he was talking about anyway.

I'd been worried how my husband would react to his step daughter's first official boyfriend, but he was completely relaxed. So relaxed he slept through most of the slide show, which the young man politely ignored.

Nevertheless, he offered to drive them back to the young man's place. In the dark it was difficult to tell if his flat is on the right or wrong side of the railway tracks. Our daughter's boyfriend appeared to be living under them.

Driving home, there was silent agreement not to delve too deeply at this stage. My husband said he was surprised how much he liked our daughter's suitor, partner or whatever the title is.

His previous anxieties about young men in her life must have been based in protectiveness rather then sexual jealousy.

The trick now is not to let our daughter know how much we approve of her young man. If she thinks we like him that much she's bound to reject him as swiftly as she would a plate-sized T-bone steak.

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